I have two fairly young children, and one of my children likes us to sit or lie with her when she is going off to sleep. To be honest the older one would sometimes like us to do that too, but he also likes to stay up reading and we refuse to sit with him after 8pm, so he goes off to sleep on his own these days. So, while I sit with my daughter I like to listen to podcasts usually. A few months ago I listened to the BBC abridged version of the book Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course as it was an abridged version I knew there were some things in the story I had missed so wanted to know more. An offer came up in my emails for membership of the service Audible, so I jumped at the chance of using my credits from this offer to get hold of the full audiobook of Yellowface.

The blurb from the back of the book says:

THIS IS ONE HELL OF A STORY.

IT’S JUST NOT HERS TO TELL.

When failed writer June Hayward witnesses her rival Athena Liu die in a freak accident, she sees her opportunity…. and takes it.

So what if it means stealing Athena’s final manuscript?

So what if it means ‘borrowing’ her identity?

And so what if the first lie is only the beginning…

Finally June has the fame she always deserved. But someone is about to expose her…..

What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

Yellowface is the story of June, an aspiring writer. Someone who had some early success, getting into an Ivy League University, and having her debut novel published. But June does not have the success or the critical acclaim that her peer and friend Athena Liu has. I say friend, June and Athena do have a relationship, but it is rather marked by jealousy. June is almost consumed by her jealousy of Athena’s literary success, but can’t stay away from Athena. For her own part Athena does not seem like she really likes June all that much, but it seems like she is hanging around with June because she has no other friends. So friendship may be a stretch as a way to describe their relationship.

One night, at Athena’s apartment, Athena tragically dies, witnessed by June who tries to save her friend, calls the emergency services and is the last person to see Athena alive. She is shocked by what she witnessed that night, but managed to keep her wits about her enough to take the draft manuscript of Athena’s latest novel home with her that Athena had just finished writing that very day. June’s luck is in because Athena is notoriously secretive about her writing process, never showing any drafts to anyone at all until they are finished. And June just can’t help herself but work on this wonderful piece of writing that has sort of fallen into her lap. She works hard turning this first draft of a story about the struggles of Chinese soldiers during the 1st World War from a first draft into a finished product and later submits this novel for publication. But she submits the novel under her own name, passing it off as entirely her own work, even changing her own name to her middle name which, again conveniently sounds like it could possibly be an Asian name.

The novel is a huge success, and Juniper Song, her new author name uses her middle name, gets a taste of what life was like for her late friend. But all of this success, and June’s actions in taking this work and passing it off as all her own work, comes at a price.

I loved this book. I loved the fact that the book’s protagonist was really not likeable at all. The start of the book explores June’s jealousy of the lifestyle that her “friend” Athena has. She doesn’t feel that Athena deserves her success, certainly not if June doesn’t have the same level of success. June thinks that some, maybe even quite a lot, of Athena’s success is down to her ethnicity. That books by Asian American authors are all the rage at the moment, and so they are having a much easier time getting published and publicised than white authors. And this is not the only racist opinion June expresses in the book. She is not a nice person. She is pretty horrible about Athena throughout the book, and this is someone who June has wronged – she quite literally stole from her, but can still spend a lot of time complaining about Athena.

The books explores theft. Obviously the theft of someone else’s work is discussed here, as June literally steals Athena’s last manuscript in the time it took for her to call the emergency services and for them to arrive. Many reviewers of June’s book discuss whether June, a white woman, is the right person to tell the story of these Chinese soldiers. And while I do agree with June’s practised arguments that authors shouldn’t have to only stick to telling stories from their own ethnic background, the fact that she agreed to change her name to Juniper Song, well it definitely would lead you to believe that June was Asian, doesn’t it? That and June’s arguments here would have far more solid ground if she hadn’t stolen Athena’s work and left her uncredited!

In justifying what she has done, June talks about how Athena collected people’s stories. She would sit and listen to someone tell her their story and then later Athena would write something that had striking similarities to that story. June is saying, quite explicitly, that Athena stole their stories for her work, so isn’t that as bad as what June did?

The story is told entirely told from June’s perspective. You see her struggles with the social media reaction to her work, to the controversy with her work. You see Athena entirely from her perspective. You see how haunted she becomes as the novel progresses. You see her justification, to herself as well as to others maybe, about how much work she put into the novel, but it is still so hard to like her because you never see her taking accountability for the fact that she has done anything wrong. There is no humility on her part. She is full of herself and her own struggles, and how she can get away with what she has done.

Since finishing this book I have found out that Rebecca F Kuang also wrote the book Babel, which I have not read yet, but is on my TBR list. My husband has read it already and from both my description to him of this book and his to me of Babel, it sounds like they are very different books. Reading this one makes me really excited about reading Babel, as I think it takes a fantastic author to write such an unlikeable character, and not just that for this awful person to be the only focus of a book, and for you to keep wanting to read on.

I loved this book, I loved that June is an anti-hero, and that even with a hero so thoroughly unlikeable you wanted to know what happened to her. I sometimes found myself feeling quite sorry for June at times, only to think to myself, this wouldn’t have happened if you’d been honest from the start, would it June? I loved the way the book ended for June. I loved that the book was about her and only her. I loved the writing style. I loved everything about Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang. It is probably my favourite book of the year so far, and I would give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.